The arena of real estate buying and marketing took a sharp turn with the advent and resulting high usage of social media and the rest of the digital world. Unlike previous times when real estate customers used to visit every broker in the town to find the relevant house, nowadays, everyone tends to go through the online websites which list houses, flats, and every other piece of real estate. Owing to this, a new block of real estate marketing companies has come up.
The question then arises: How can you leverage the power of online marketing to get the complete benefit for your real estate business? In this article, we’ll go through the ways you can achieve this, based upon the relevant consumer behavior and insights. So, following are the ways you can use each platform to your business’ benefit:
Table Of Contents
1. Facebook
When it comes to marketing real estate online, there can be no better platform than Facebook. This is not only because of the huge population frequenting the platform or the amount of time they spend but also because of the detailed targeting system of Facebook that especially helps the real estate advertisers. Though every business must target a niche, we cannot think of any business that would suffer more loss than real estate business, if this ‘niche’ principle is not followed.
For this, Facebook not only offers segmentation through Location, Age, Demography, and Interests but also deep behavioral targeting options. The detailed targeting gives you information such as the financial health of the prospect, their current home-ownership status (whether they are a first time purchaser or renters or not), and their purchase behavior.
The residential profile option lets you know whether the user is ‘likely to move’ or not. This option is greatly helpful in segregating interested customers and non-relevant users. Obviously, you’ll be putting in less amount of money in advertising if you already knew who is interested and who is not.
Besides that, having a visually-intriguing Facebook page with good reviews and a high follower base automatically instills trust in the customer about your brand. For effective video marketing, hire a video editor, or you can use online video editing software such as InVideo to add a touch of good design to your advertisements.
2. Instagram
Instagram is the platform that works great on the bedrock of stunning visuals and good design. With a huge percentage of the world population using this app regularly, it is indeed obvious that if you cast images that feel eye-soothing, then your brand is bound to get attention. Having said that, getting attention from an irrelevant prospect won’t be of great benefit to you. The good thing is that Instagram supports area and radius targeting and also Facebook targeting options.
Since we’ve found our target audience, now is the time to reap the benefits of Instagram marketing service through our content. Video marketing and carousel ads are two avenues that can definitely bring you lots of benefits on Instagram. Shoot high-definition videos and pictures of your properties and advertise them on Instagram with simple yet smart copy, and a great part of your job on this platform is done.
The only significant thing that remains is the use of analytics and a bit of deep research to find the most applicable hashtags for your campaign. According to research, if you’re only posting and not advertising using money, then 11 hashtags work the best, and if you are putting in the money, nine hashtags are optimal (Source).
3. Twitter
If you’re thinking that using the same tactics as on Facebook and Instagram would work on Twitter, then you’re wrong. The primary reason for this could be that people use Twitter for other reasons than they use Facebook or Instagram. Most users are there to strike conversations on various things happening, and the easy retweet option does support it too.
So what’s in store for realtors through this platform? Twitter is the platform where you’ll interact closely with your customers and followers. The same old advertising tactics of posting your property photos won’t be sufficient here. Apart from that, you’ll also post interesting content related to your business or domain and something that catches and holds the attention of your prospects.
On the technical front, there are several tools that Twitter supports that can give you an edge over your competitors. Some of the prominent ones are Hootsuite (allows you to schedule your posts and helps you access your account from any device), Buffer (automatically finds the best time for you to post based on analytics), and Brandwatch Audience (to find the best audience related to your brand).
4. Email Marketing
Never underestimate the power of direct mail in advertising. Most people who are going to buy real estate would probably be belonging to SEC-A or SEC-B. Owing to their shortage of time, people in these socioeconomic classes are not frequent social media visitors. But what they keep on frequenting is their Email inbox. So naturally, that’s one of the best places to advertise them on.
The easiest and the smoothest way of acquiring a database for your email marketing campaign is through a sign-up form on your landing page. It is always better to ask the users in the form itself if they’re willing to receive newsletters and other mail from you. This reduces the chances of the user later unsubscribing from your mails.
By now, you already have a fair knowledge of your customers and their inclinations. Segregate your customers according to any of the parameters from age, location, new sign-up, or returning customer. Send them specialized emails that directly taps into their desire in the real estate space. Obviously, it will take time and practice to catch the right nerve and to drive the acquisition from there.
If these four major customer touch-points are taken care of, then you are ready to bring on a 360-degree marketing campaign encompassing all of these platforms and having the same underlying communication. To craft the communication for such high-scale campaigns, always begin from the insights gathered. And later, create customized content for each platform. That’s it. You’re good to go!
Read More: 10 Ways To Create Instagram Stories to Grow Your Business